Todd’s Peek For A March Review: “Being There” by Jerzy Kosinski

 Jerzy Kosinski is an American writer of Polish descent famous for his evocative style and writings.  He lived from 1933 to 1991 and his extraordinary writings live on.  Kosinski’s body of work includes twelve novels and three books of essays.

“Being There” tells the story of Chance who lives as  a gardener for years in a wealthy, old man’s estate.  Chance is by no ordinary terms, eclectic by himself as he knows very little of himself and being a gardener is his soul existence on this dying man’s estate.  He has never been told much about his true identity and what that really means because he was adopted as a orphan at a young age.  The story shares his own narrative in the third person which reveals the telling titling of “Being There” as apropos.  

Jerzy Kosinski creates Chance beyond the simplest description, almost beyond seeming believable to the reader. Shy and assertive at the same time, Chance is the hero and the protagonist of the novel.  He intentionally cares to see life in simpler terms with really loving to garden at the estate for years without knowing what life is like on the outside world or knowing more about his own life. Although for Chance deep down he is bothered by those eternal questions which again are so telling to the events of the novel, the story goes from the living on the estate to the world beyond.

The book is an epoch read for all communities of people.  Chance is unique and shows us the clarity and diversity of being human and it is his spirit that prevails throughout the novel.  Chance is to be overpowered by the world in a way, yet his/ours human spirit  is to remain in tact.  Chance’s hopes, dreams and fears turn into sheer nothingness for him as the story develops, and is likely to, as the story line really needn’t develop beyond the reader’s original feeling for Chance from beginning, throughout the novel to the end.  Chance is a man who ultimately needs to be loved and yet I believe the world does not give him or offer him that story or characterization, not ever.  If  only that were the actual case “to the paradoxically ‘Being There’”, then it would also be less poignant over time and also change the meaning of Chance’s story.

Jerzy Kosinski proves in this writing that concentric reality isn’t always what it seems to be as we know it in this doggie dog world of ours! Take your own chance to read this witty yet compelling fast read by stopping by R.U.12? to pick up “Being There” for yourself.  To see paradoxically read  it evokes the metaphor of  to chance life, not to Chance’s life at all!  To live out your life the way Chance did and did so well by assuming that read as important to life.  In doing so -- to find out as the reader -- that per chance the age of innocence for all people as we know of life on this planet could never die young if we were all as brave and spirited and courageous and admiring as is Chance himself in “Being There”!